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1 CHILDREN AND FAMILIES EDUCATION AND THE ARTS ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE INFRASTRUCTURE AND TRANSPORTATION INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS LAW AND BUSINESS NATIONAL SECURITY POPULATION AND AGING PUBLIC SAFETY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TERRORISM AND HOMELAND SECURITY The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. This electronic document was made available from as a public service of the RAND Corporation. Skip all front matter: Jump to Page 16 Support RAND Purchase this document Browse Reports & Bookstore Make a charitable contribution For More Information Visit RAND at Explore the RAND Corporation View document details Limited Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law as indicated in a notice appearing later in this work. This electronic representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of RAND electronic documents to a non-rand website is prohibited. RAND electronic documents are protected under copyright law. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of our research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please see RAND Permissions.

2 This report is part of the RAND Corporation research report series. RAND reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.

4 Report Denying Flight Strategic Options for Employing No-Fly Zones Karl P. Mueller RAND Project AIR FORCE Prepared for the United States Air Force Approved for public release; distribution unlimited

5 The research described in this report was sponsored by the United States Air Force under Contract FA C Further information may be obtained from the Strategic Planning Division, Directorate of Plans, Hq USAF. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mueller, Karl P. Denying flight : strategic options for employing no-fly zones / Karl P. Mueller. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Air warfare Case studies. 2. Air power Case studies. 3. Air traffic rules, International. 4. United States Military policy. I. Title. II. Title: Strategic options for employing no-fly zones. UG632.M '142 dc The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at R is a registered trademark. Copyright 2013 RAND Corporation This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of RAND documents to a non-rand website is prohibited. RAND documents are protected under copyright law. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of our research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please see the RAND permissions page (www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html). RAND OFFICES SANTA MONICA, CA WASHINGTON, DC PITTSBURGH, PA NEW ORLEANS, LA JACKSON, MS BOSTON, MA DOHA, QA CAMBRIDGE, UK BRUSSELS, BE

6 Preface In recent years, discussions about external military intervention in local conflicts have often included consideration of no-fly zones (NFZs) as a policy option. In the past two decades, the U.S. Air Force has participated in three contingencies involving NFZs over Bosnia, Iraq, and Libya, and NFZ proposals have been proffered for some time as an option for intervention in the Syrian civil war that would avoid placing Western troops on the ground. This paper is intended as a preliminary look at NFZs as a strategic approach in such situations, with an emphasis on the forms they might take, their potential utility, and their probable limitations. It should be of interest to readers participating or interested in decisionmaking about military intervention, as well as Air Force and other defense personnel who bear the responsibility of planning for and executing such operations. The research reported here was made possible by RAND concept formulation funds and was conducted within the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE. RAND Project AIR FORCE RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF), a division of the RAND Corporation, is the U.S. Air Force s federally funded research and development center for studies and analyses. PAF provides the Air Force with independent analyses of policy alternatives affecting the development, employment, combat readiness, and support of current and future air, space, and cyber forces. Research is conducted in four programs: Force Modernization and Employment; Manpower, Personnel, and Training; Resource Management; and Strategy and Doctrine. Additional information about PAF is available on our website: iii

12 Denying Flight: Strategic Options for Employing No-Fly Zones Since the end of the Cold War, no-fly zones (NFZs) 1 have begun to appear on menus of policy options for dealing with troublesome states. Prohibiting a miscreant government from using airpower for warfare or transportation within its own country may appeal to policymakers, primarily because it is perhaps the most limited way that military force can be used as a punitive tool. Compared to other forms of armed intervention, NFZs typically entail relatively little risk to the powers imposing them, as least when directed against militarily weak targets. Yet, because they are an active use of military power, NFZs tend to seem more assertive than policy instruments such as economic sanctions. Due to their limited nature, no-fly zones may also be relatively easy policy initiatives for international coalitions to agree on when they are keen to act against a target regime but wary of taking large risks or committing themselves to major military action. This was very much the case in early 2011, following uprisings against Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan government s subsequent crackdown against its internal opponents. With a rising sense that the international community needed to do something to help the rebels, first the Gulf Cooperation Council, then the Arab League, and finally the United Nations voted to support the imposition of a NFZ over Libya, from which grew the 2011 air campaign against Qaddafi that enabled the Libyan opposition to defeat his regime and remove him from power (Operation Odyssey Dawn [OOD] and Operation Unified Protector [OUP]). In the wake of the Libyan intervention, advocacy of a no-fly zone to prevent the Syrian government from using airpower against rebels in that civil war has been considerable. It seems likely that similar uses of NFZs will continue to be of interest in coming years, particularly as many Western countries are cutting defense spending and states are seeking to maintain international good order on the cheap in terms of both political liability and human and material cost. This paper provides a brief, initial exploration of the nature, variety, and potential utility of NFZs and, in the process, asks whether they are merely a trivial way to employ military power or whether they merit consideration as a significant strategic option in their own right. 2 1 The pidgin-like term no-fly zone is awkward, much like its sibling, no-go area. Calling NFZs no-flight zones would be more elegant, but this term has never become popular in spite of newspaper editors occasional efforts to advance it, and this essay does not argue the point. 2 In the past, NFZs have rarely been the subject of scholarship beyond accounts of individual cases. Notable exceptions include Alexander Benard, Lessons from Iraq and Bosnia on the Theory and Practice of No-fly Zones, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3, September 2004, pp , and Michael N. Schmitt, Clipped Wings: Effective and Legal No-Fly Zone Rules of Engagement, Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review, Vol. 20, 1998, pp

13 Keeping Their Feet on the Ground: No-Fly Zones in Theory and Practice For the purposes of this discussion, a no-fly zone can be defined as a policy under which an outside actor overtly prohibits some or all aircraft flight over a specified territory and undertakes to intercept aircraft violating the prohibition or otherwise punish those responsible for violations. 3 Several features of this definition are worth noting. First, an NFZ thus defined does not include defending the sovereignty of one s own airspace or that of an allied state with the ally s consent. In a sense, it can be said that virtually every country has an NFZ of some sort over its own territory, often prohibiting all flights in particularly sensitive airspace, but these are not of interest here. Second, an NFZ is a declaratory policy under which one expects violators to be aware of the line they are crossing. Third, imposing an NFZ worthy of the name entails enforcing it, not merely complaining about those who violate it; normally, this means intercepting aircraft that defy the ban, though an NFZ could also employ an enforcement mechanism that relies on other, less-direct forms of sanction. 4 The interest of this essay is NFZs that are not subsumed within larger military campaigns. This distinction can be fuzzy at the edges, but NFZs are essentially conditional: if you fly, you are subject to punishment, whereas in a war, enemy aircraft are subject to attack regardless of their behavior (though if they stay on the ground, attacking them might be judged not worth the trouble). Thus, when British and American fighters roamed over Germany in 1944 hunting Luftwaffe aircraft in the air and on the ground, they were establishing Allied air superiority over the Third Reich, not enforcing an NFZ. No-Fly Zone Precursors No-fly zones are a relatively new innovation in military and strategic art. Of course, they could not usefully exist until aviation developed to the point where denying someone the benefits of it would be significant. Moreover, proscribing flight over a substantial foreign territory depends on having the ability to monitor the airspace in question and then react to violations of the NFZ in a reasonably timely fashion without and herein lies the rub having to employ (and potentially place at risk) excessively numerous and expensive forces. Saturating a target state s airspace with a huge number of patrolling fighters could have served as the basis for an NFZ in the 1930s, but would hardly have been economical enough to be an interesting strategic option for policymakers. Thus, it is not surprising that the NFZ came into its own only in the era of jet 3 In U.S. joint doctrine, an NFZ is a type of exclusion zone that a sanctioning body establishes... to prohibit specific activities in a specific geographic area (Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Operations, August 11, 2011, pp. V 13). Note that, as its name implies, an NFZ as defined here focuses only on preventing the use of aviation; in recent policy debates, the term has often been used as a shorthand label for other types of aerial intervention as well. 4 For the sake of completeness, it may be worth noting a fourth feature of the definition, which is that NFZs per se apply only to atmospheric flight, not spaceflight. 2

14 fighters and, above all, airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, such as the iconic E-3 Sentry, that can efficiently monitor air activity over large swaths of unfriendly territory. 5 Nevertheless, the conceptual roots of the no-fly zone predate the jet age, most obviously in the naval blockade. Used for centuries as a tool of warfighting to weaken an enemy s economy (as well as contain hostile warships in port), blockades could also be imposed separately from other military operations to place coercive pressure on the target country by denying it access to imported goods (either specific categories designated as contraband or across the board) or export markets. Blockades may also be imposed on a very limited basis, for example in the enforcement of arms embargos. Perhaps the earliest aerial precursor of the NFZ was the post-1918 prohibition on military aviation placed on Germany under the Treaty of Versailles. This was not a no-fly zone as the term is being used here Germany was prohibited not merely from flying warplanes but from possessing an air force altogether. 6 However, it represented an early recognition that denying a modern country the military benefits of flight would impose a serious constraint on its potential to emerge and act as a great power. Between the world wars, aerial policing of colonial possessions became a popular policy instrument for several European powers, most famously Great Britain as it sought to manage a sometimes-restive empire at minimal cost (and as the newly established Royal Air Force sought to demonstrate its utility). 7 This was in some ways far removed from the idea of a no-fly zone, given the absence of aviation among the target populations, but it grew out of a similar desire to exercise power over weaker adversaries economically by exploiting control of the air. When modern NFZs emerged in the 1990s, it would not take long for the distinction between NFZ enforcement and aerial policing to become blurred in practice. 8 Bosnia: Operation Deny Flight The archetypal modern NFZ, and one of the most literally named military operations in an era during which such labels would become the norm for the United States, was Operation Deny Flight, which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conducted over Bosnia- Herzegovina during its civil war following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. It began in October 1992 under the name Operation Sky Monitor in response to United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 781, which prohibited military flights over Bosnia and called on member 5 The Boeing E-3, operated by the United States and several allied air forces, is better known as the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System). The U.S. Navy operates the carrier-based Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye in the same role. 6 This prohibition survived until Adolf Hitler came to power. In the years prior to 1933, Germany covertly redeveloped its military aviation program under the guise of the state airline, glider clubs, and other subterfuges. 7 James S. Corum and Wray R. Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars, Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2003, Chapters The descriptions of the Bosnian and Iraqi NFZs that follow are based in large part on data superbly compiled by RAND research assistant Abby Doll. 3

15 states to help monitor adherence to the NFZ. In April 1993, after UNSCR 816 extended the ban to prohibit all fixed- and rotary-wing flights over Bosnia, NATO began Operation Deny Flight to enforce the NFZ. The operation was commanded from NATO s combined air operations center at Vicenza, Italy, with enforcement mission sorties generally flying from bases in Italy or France and from aircraft carriers offshore. The Deny Flight mandate was extended beyond the NFZ function in June 1993 to include providing close air support (CAS) as needed to protect United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, and later in Croatia, and to protect UN-designated safe areas that were established in a number of Bosnian population centers. Over more than two years, NATO would fly some 50,000 Deny Flight combat air patrol and CAS sorties, along with a similar number of support and training sorties, although actual strikes were very infrequent. At the end of August 1995, the NFZ mission was supplanted by the Operation Deliberate Force air campaign against the Bosnian Serb Army after it overran the Srebrenica and Žepa safe areas; by this point, fewer than ten CAS or offensive air strike missions had been approved through the NATO-UN dual-key system and carried out by U.S., British, French, Spanish, and Dutch fighters. Two NATO aircraft were shot down over the course of the campaign, and two more were lost in noncombat incidents, but all aircrew were rescued. U.S. Air Force F-16s shot down four Bosnian Serb light attack aircraft in the operation s single lethal air-to-air combat incident. Iraq: Operations Provide Comfort, Northern Watch, and Southern Watch The NFZs imposed on Iraq during the period between the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq began in the immediate aftermath of the former conflict, when coalition commander General Norman Schwarzkopf laid out terms for the ceasefire that ended Operation Desert Storm. Improvising in the absence of guidance from Washington, Schwarzkopf ordered that Iraqi fixed-wing warplanes in the region remain grounded but permitted the Iraqi army to fly helicopters in the expectation that these would be important in its redeployment from Kuwait and southern Iraq. This decision surprised the Iraqis, as it gave them free rein to employ helicopter gunships to help the Iraqi army crush the postwar uprising against Saddam Hussein s regime by southern Iraqi Shiites that President Bush had encouraged but that the United States did not subsequently support. This ad hoc NFZ would soon be replaced by a pair of NFZs in northern and southern Iraq. The northern NFZ was established in the airspace north of latitude 36 North to protect Iraqi Kurds from regime attacks initially under Operation Provide Comfort (which also, as the name implies, included providing humanitarian aid to the Kurds) and later under Operation Northern Watch (ONW). This NFZ prohibited flights by Iraqi fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters. U.S., British, and Turkish aircraft enforcing the NFZ operated primarily from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and flew more than 75,000 sorties of all types between 1991 and Operation Southern Watch (OSW), designed to protect southern Iraq s Shia population from depredations by the Baghdad regime, was initially established in June 1992 south of 32 North, 4

16 but this was expanded to 33 North in Like its northern counterpart, OSW prohibited Iraqi fixed- and rotary-wing flights in the zone. OSW was conducted by U.S., British, French, and Saudi aircraft operating from bases in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states and from aircraft carriers in the Gulf; the operation ultimately comprised some 150,000 sorties. Unlike the wellarmed Kurds, Saddam s opponents in southern Iraq were ill equipped to defend themselves against the Iraqi army, and the NFZ ultimately did little to protect them from the regime s suppression. Iraqi forces frequently challenged both NFZs. A handful of Iraqi Air Force jets were shot down by U.S. fighters, but most of the combat involved air defense systems illuminating or shooting at patrolling aircraft and U.S. and allied aircraft striking Iraqi targets in response. These retaliatory strikes reached a relatively high degree of intensity by the early 2000s, to the point that the Iraqi integrated air defense system (IADS) had been comprehensively mauled prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the invasion that began in April 2003 and effectively ended the Iraqi NFZs. The Iraqis failed to shoot down any coalition aircraft during the operations despite the large number of sorties, although a small number of Predator drones were reportedly lost and, in a 1994 friendly-fire incident, two ONW F-15s mistakenly shot down a pair of U.S. helicopters. Libya: Operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector In current policy discussions, the 2011 aerial intervention in Libya looms very large as a seemingly successful example of an NFZ. Anti-Qaddafi forces centered around Benghazi rose in rebellion against the Libyan dictator in February 2011, and when the regime s forces began moving to crush the rebels, airstrikes by Libyan Arab Republic Air Force jets and helicopter gunships were prominently featured in video accounts of the fighting. Political leaders and other actors in the Arab world and the West soon began advocating the imposition of an NFZ over Libya, a call that was endorsed by the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab League, and finally by the United Nations in UNSCR 1973, which also included an arms embargo against the Libyan regime and a mandate to use airpower to help protect civilians. Under this banner, Britain, France, the United States, a number of other NATO allies, and several non-nato partner states conducted a seven-month military intervention in the conflict, relying almost entirely on airpower based in Europe and on naval vessels in the Mediterranean. This intervention enabled the Libyan rebels to survive, develop into an effective fighting force (with substantial external assistance), and then attack and defeat the forces of Qaddafi s regime. 9 The 2011 air campaign was a notable success, at least in immediate terms, leading to the intervening powers desired military result while costing them very little. 10 However, several 9 See Christopher Chivvis, Toppling Qaddafi: Libya and the Future of Liberal Intervention, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. 10 It is not yet possible to seriously assess the long-term balance of strategic costs and benefits from the Libyan intervention, since this will depend on how the postwar political fabric of Libya develops in coming years. However, 5

17 features of the campaign are important to note when identifying it as a precedent for the effective use of NFZs. First, what was called a no-fly zone in Libya in fact comprised both a traditional NFZ and a far more substantial and significant effort to comprehensively and preemptively destroy Libyan airpower and air defenses in the opening days of the campaign using hundreds of air-to-ground sorties and cruise missile strikes against airfields, surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites, radars, and other targets. Once this phase of the campaign was complete, the NFZ remained in place, but the Libyan government no longer had the ability to use airpower. Second, the NFZ, even so defined, was not conducted in isolation, but in concert with the civilian protection mission, which entailed air strikes against Libyan regime ground forces and related military installations, and in parallel with the effort to train and equip the Libyan rebels. Thus, the Libyan NFZ was part of a notably successful military operation, but it was far from the most important component, so to characterize the campaign as a successful NFZ is comparable to describing the defeat of Germany in World War II as a successful naval blockade. Variations on the Theme NFZ As these recent examples demonstrate, NFZs are not all alike. NFZs can vary along a number of dimensions, with the two most salient being the actions that are prohibited and how the enforcers of the NFZ decide to deal with the threats posed by the target s air defenses. Drawing a Line in the Sky The most basic parameters of an NFZ are what it restricts or prohibits and where. The term no-fly zone implies that no flights by aircraft will be allowed within the boundaries specified for an NFZ, but it need not be all or nothing. An NFZ might proscribe flights by military but not civilian aircraft, it might prohibit flights by fixed-wing aircraft but not helicopters (like the terms set for Iraq after the 1991 ceasefire), or it might allow flights by prearrangement with the enforcing authority. An NFZ might also be specific to one party in a conflict rather than apply to everyone. De facto prohibitions may also diverge from formal ones. For example, in practice, the Deny Flight NFZ over Bosnia was not effective at prohibiting short flights, particularly by helicopters, because the density of the patrolling forces was insufficient to enable quick interceptions against very brief flights, but this was accepted as a limitation of the campaign. The rules of engagement (ROE) of NFZs can also vary with respect to enforcement mechanisms. For example, will only aircraft violating the NFZ be subject to attack, or will retaliation extend to striking the airfields from which they took off? The rules for enforcement may vary depending on the circumstances even when the proscriptive terms of the NFZ do not: in particular, a shoot-on-sight policy might be adopted for military aircraft violating an NFZ, while civilian aircraft might be treated more cautiously to avoid unintended shootdowns or the fact that this remains a source of great uncertainty, and indeed unease, among the intervening powers illustrates the limitations of NFZs and other interventions conducted with very limited direct political involvement. 6

18 unfavorable political consequences, and as a matter of adherence to the principle of discrimination in the law of armed conflict. Dealing with Air Defenses An additional factor of great import in deliberations about establishing NFZs is how air defenses will be handled. Traditionally (to the extent that it is possible to characterize NFZs as having traditions, given the small and recent list of examples), air defenses that attack aircraft patrolling to enforce the NFZ will be subject to retaliatory strikes, and of course interceptors taking off would automatically be in violation of the NFZ. However, there are a number of gray areas that would need to be addressed in the ROE, whether formal or informal: Will suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) strikes be limited to the specific SAM or antiaircraft artillery (AAA) site that fired at the patrolling aircraft, or does such an attack make other elements of an IADS, such as command and control facilities or other SAM/AAA sites, liable to retaliatory attack? Will tracking an aircraft with a fire-control radar be treated as a hostile act calling for retaliatory SEAD even if no shots are fired by the associated SAM or AAA system? Will all attacks directed against aircraft imposing the NFZ be triggers for response, or will trivial ones (such as light AAA shooting at aircraft that are out of range) be ignored? Will strikes only be launched in immediate response to attacks, or will weapons or systems that fired at NFZ aircraft be considered fair game for counterattacks days or weeks after the initial provocation? Beginning in 2011 with discussions of establishing an NFZ over Libya, a new element was added to considerations of the relationship between NFZs and SEAD. In response to calls for a Libyan NFZ, U.S. military leaders declared that, as a matter of course, any NFZ over Libya would need to begin with a comprehensive, preemptive SEAD and offensive counter-air (OCA) campaign to eliminate Libyan airpower and air defense capabilities that might be used to interfere with NFZ enforcement. Rather remarkably, this principle rapidly became accepted within the policy debate even though it did not represent an established norm in NFZ practice. 11 It currently appears that in the wake of the Libyan operation, the idea that future NFZs should or must begin with extensive destruction of enemy air defenses (DEAD) campaigns continues to 11 Although the Libyan NFZ was a departure from previous NFZs, the situation was different as well. In Iraq, OSW and ONW had been preceded by the Gulf War air campaign, which had badly degraded Iraq s air defenses, while in Bosnia, the Serb forces had relatively meager air defenses, even compared to Libya s. The assertion that an NFZ would require the preemptive demolition of Libyan air defenses initially served the interests of those who wanted to avoid intervening in Libya by making the establishment of an NFZ a more dramatic military step than it would have been under Bosnia-like ROE. Later, as support for intervention grew, it protected the intervening air forces from being directed to undertake an intervention under highly restrictive ROE and also came to serve the interests of those who supported a Libyan NFZ but actually desired a more energetic intervention by the international community. When the campaign began in late March 2011, all strikes against Libyan airbases and air defense related targets were collectively classified as no-fly zone enforcement regardless of whether their targets were actually involved in NFZ violations. 7

19 carry weight this has been a commonplace assumption in debates about imposing an NFZ in Syria although how persistent this belief will be is not yet clear. In effect, Operation Odyssey Dawn did not represent a new approach to NFZs as much as an alternative way to deny the target state the military benefits of using airpower: The coercive Combat Air Patrol (CAP) model (a true NFZ, as in Operation Deny Flight) is based on deterring the adversary from flying by patrolling an exclusion zone and intercepting, identifying, and forcing or shooting down the aircraft that violate it. Enemy air defenses that attack or threaten (depending on ROE) the enforcing aircraft are likewise attacked. The brute force Offensive Counter-Air (OCA) model addresses the same problem by simply eliminating the adversary s ability to fly by destroying aircraft or bases, likely combined with a comprehensive attack on its air defense system, as in OOD. 12 The first-order strategic effect of the two models is similar. However, their requirements and uncertainties differ. Under the CAP model, a relatively small force can maintain an NFZ provided that fear of enforcement actions persuades the affected state to respect it, but constant vigilance is required to respond to challenges, and ambushes by air defenses remain a persistent risk. The OCA model requires considerable effort in the early stages for its intensive attacks on airbases and defenses, but once the opponent s ability to fly or fight back is largely eliminated, maintaining the NFZ should be comparatively simple and safer. Both models constitute acts of war; the CAP model is based on a more limited use of force, but whether it remains limited will depend on the response it elicits. No-Fly Zone Objectives, Limitations, and Options Turning now from considering the how of NFZs to the why, it is critical to recognize that this policy instrument can be used for a variety of purposes, six of which are described in this section. These are not mutually exclusive, but NFZs will not always have the same objectives, and taking into account the differences among their strategic purposes is central to both making good strategy and evaluating its ultimate success or failure. 13 In the end, assessing the conditions under which NFZs hold the greatest promise of strategic value, and how great that value might be, is largely an exercise in deductive reasoning; the relatively few historical examples of the art form that we can examine are instructive but cast only patchy illumination on the subject. Not surprisingly, the answers depend on the purpose of the NFZ and the ways in which its goals are intended to be achieved. 12 In theory, one might mount a major attack against either an opponent s air force or air defenses, but not both. However, assuming the adversary possesses both, there is unlikely to be reason to strike its air defenses while leaving its airpower unharmed, and an attack to destroy its airpower on the ground will almost certainly provoke intense air defense activity, leading to widespread strikes against SAMs and related targets. 13 The same is true of many types of strategic policy. Economic sanctions are employed for a number of reasons in addition to the goal of coercing the target state into compliance with the overt demands of the power imposing them. 8

20 Preventing the Use of Airpower Keeping a target state from using its airpower against civilians or others one wishes to protect is perhaps the most obvious NFZ objective and almost certainly the most likely to be declared, as in the cases of Operation Deny Flight, ONW/OSW, and OOD/OUP. It is, of course, only relevant in cases in which the targeted actor has been using (or is expected to use) airpower in ways that are desirable (and feasible) to prevent. In the short term, as illustrated by the Deny Flight NFZ, this may amount merely to protecting people from aerial attack. Over the longer run, the goal of an NFZ might be to alter the outcome of a conflict at a more strategic level, enabling probable losers to become victors (as in Libya) or averting an expected victory by the stronger side so that a settlement might be negotiated. The ability to change the outcome of an armed conflict by preventing one or more belligerents from using airpower depends, naturally, on how important the use of airpower is to their prospects for military success. Some states rely heavily on airpower for their military might, but these tend to be advanced, mostly Western powers. Countries such as Iraq and Libya, with more-limited resources and less-capable air forces, mainly wield power though their armies, and this is particularly true in internal conflicts fought at close range and often in populated areas. Thus taking away their ability to conduct aerial bombardment against their enemies, to employ air support on or beyond the battlefield, or to provide air mobility for their ground forces will typically have an effect only at the margins. Therefore, while denying the use of airpower may matter a great deal in conflicts involving relatively evenly matched forces, it is unlikely on its own to reverse the course of a more uneven fight. Of course, some actors make little or no use of airpower at all, or use it with little effect, in which case an NFZ might only interfere with their military operations by preventing aerial resupply from outside supporters. Coercing Adversaries Instead of, or in addition to, directly producing results by preventing enemy use of airpower, an NFZ can be imposed and maintained as a coercive lever to pressure the target to change its behavior (beyond not violating the NFZ) or to comply with other demands. 14 The potential for successful coercion depends on how painful or threatening the NFZ is to the adversary state or to influential people within it, who also need to believe that the NFZ will be lifted in return for submitting to the coercive demands. If being denied the use of airpower imperils the target s security by making it vulnerable to an internal or external enemy, the coercive potential of an NFZ could be quite high, but such cases are not likely to be common. As with all coercion, the magnitude of the stakes how motivated the target is to resist the coercer s demands will be vastly important. The same pressure that will seem trivial when severe demands are being made may be persuasive if giving in seems like a relatively minor 14 See, for example, Annelie Gregor, Limited Military Pressure: An Analytical Framework to Assess No-Fly Zones as a Single Instrument in Coercive Diplomacy, Master s thesis, Swedish National Defense College, June 4,

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